It's hard to imagine being insecure when you're Shania Twain. She's one of the most stunning women to ever grace country music. Not to mention she really floors everyone with her incredible skills as a performer. But building that self confidence takes a long time to develop. It's not always intrinsically a part of us. Oftentimes, we have to drastically rewire our brains not to feel so down on ourselves all the time. That's certainly the case for Twain, who spent years trying to overcome deep insecurities about herself.
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Recently, Shania spoke with Us Weekly, where she chronicles the different phases of her illustrious careers. One moment during the interview saw her get incredibly candid about being young in the limelight. That time period made her incredibly self conscious about her body and, consequently, saw Twain desire a different career path. "I was always insecure about my body. As a female, throughout my youth, [I was] touched inappropriately so many times [and] I was in abusive situations where you hate being a woman. I hated being a girl," Shania recalls. My mother goes, 'What do you want to be when you grow up?' and I said, 'A bodybuilder.'"
Shania Twain Wanted to Be a Bodybuilder Because of Past Trauma About Her Body
Ultimately, Shania's reasoning at the time was so that she had some agency over her body. Nobody would touch her unless there was consent if she was big enough to defend herself. "I wanted to be a big, strong man that nobody was going to f**k around with. No one was going to touch my arm or my ass or anything unless I was OK with it. I was hiding all through my teens. I hated having boobs, I hated having hips," Shania explains. "I think a lot of that was also because a lot of the models when I was a kid were very, very thin. That was a sign of elegance and feminine beauty to me."
Eventually, Twain found her confidence behind the camera, where there was a relative disconnect between her and those who were salivating over her. Moreover, she also got to see a version of herself she loved that differed from the self hatred in the mirror. Logically speaking, if she looked great in videos and magazine covers, she couldn't possibly look as bad as she thought she did once upon a time ago.
"Once I got behind the camera and started looking at clothes and fashion, I was like, 'Wow, I'm actually a woman after all, and I think I might like it.' When I wrote 'Man, I Feel Like a Woman!' it was an absolute celebration [of that]. And I felt empowered behind the camera. I was like, 'They can't grab me. I'm safe,'" Shania says.
